Rising ICON #4: Ramsey Shaffer
What name do you prefer to be called?
Ramsey Shaffer
What are your pronouns?
He/him
Where did you grow up?
Faribault, MN
What city are you currently based in?
Rochester, MN
How do you typically introduce yourself to new people?
Hi I’m Ramsey, cofounder/CEO of Uptrends – it’s a pleasure to meet you
What’s one thing you wish more people knew about you?
Hmmm… I think I’m a pretty transparent guy. One thing I don’t really like to talk about often is that my dad passed away unexpectedly when I was 7; which I suppose means I learned really young how fragile time on Earth can be. Ever since then it’s been pretty inherent for me to try and seize each day.
Who do you help?
I care a lot about helping people spend their time more meaningfully. Right now the primary focus is helping DIY stock market investors spend less time doom-scrolling through the news.
What are you building now?
Uptrends.ai – a website that makes it easy for investors to stay ahead of trends & above the noise
What were you building ten years ago today?
I was a high school sophomore… probably working on getting my driver’s license (yes I failed my first exam). The only thing I knew how to ‘start up’ was a desktop computer!
What do you predict of yourself 10 years from now?
Probably A) building another startup, B) helping other entrepreneurs, or C) retired & maybe running a bar in the North Woods
What’s a fact or statistic you wish everyone knew about your industry?
Two dynamics are occurring for people my age: 1) more young people than ever before are turning to the stock market as a vehicle for achieving financial freedom, and 2) the average person in their 20’s spends a quarter of their day on social media, which appears to be unhealthy in a lot of ways.
Why do you believe the work you do matters?
For young investors, social media is the primary way to learn about & inform investment decisions. Much of our time is spent scrolling, mainly for fear of missing out on important events.
The questions we’re posing with Uptrends is simple: how do we help people find what matters without feeling like they need to be constantly online?
Who is your mentor and what is the best advice they’ve given you?
Never met him, but one person I’ve taken a LOT of advice from & try to model is Richard Feynman. One of my favorite quotes of his: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool” – definitely keeps me honest.
What piece of content about you or your company are you most proud of?
JD Duggan from the MSP Biz Journal wrote a really thoughtful piece about us this summer after we rebranded from Babbl to Uptrends, it was probably my first realization that this whole ‘startup’ thing was a bit more than a shoebox project… like people actually care enough about what we’re doing to spontaneously write articles about it.
Who would you love to be interviewed by?
Walter Isaacson; I love his work, and he’s only seems to spend time covering the most interesting, historical people. I’d be able to fanboy and it would be a good litmus test for whether I’ve accomplished anything or not.
If you had to give a TEDTalk tomorrow, what would the title be?
‘The Art of Finding the Right TEDTalk to Watch on Youtube’
What award would mean the most to win?
Depends… I think a Nobel is a little out of reach for awhile… Getting into TIME or Forbes would be enough for me.
What makes zero sense to you?
I don’t like olives.. don’t understand how people eat them.
What’s a word in your industry you hope gets re-evaluated?
‘Diligence’ is a word I think of a lot; when it comes to informing a decision (particularly an investment decision), diligence is the word people use to describe the process; most people imagine doing ‘due diligence’ to be a lengthy thing lasting days or weeks before painstakingly making a final decision… but in reality the amount of time the avg. person spends deciding if they should buy a stock is less than 30min.
I wonder why we can’t have both – what if you could do extremely thorough due diligence in a matter of 30min or less? I think that’s the direction AI is bringing us over the last year; the velocity of diligence is increasing exponentially across almost every industry… which is a tremendous thing for everybody.
What game are you changing?
I like to think we’re re-imaging this whole ‘attention economy’ thing we’ve seen the digital content space morph into over the past decade. Right now, nearly every major content publisher keeps the lights on by writing a large volume of click-baity, shallow content to force people to their convoluted websites as a way to sell on-site advertisements (looking at you Buzzfeed). It results in a lot of human time completely wasted
We’re saying what if you could hand-pick the things you care about and receive a notification whenever something is actually worth your attention. Like, what if you could become more informed with as little time spent online as possible? It would probably involve some sort of personalized alerting system – so that’s what we’re building
What’s the next thing you’re a part of that you want to invite more people to participate in?
OnlyFounders.tech; a community cooperative of startup founders; bringing entrepreneurs together and share resources without any extra ‘fluff’ – it’s been a really really fun & meaningful way to get smart innovators all in the same room.
Where can we follow you online?
www.linkedin.com/in/RamseyShaffer
What’s one thing that makes every leader better?
I like to remind myself of two words: “Take Care”
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We’re grateful to each Rising ICON for their transformative work. Thank you, Ramsey, for sharing your story!
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“...that’s the direction AI is bringing us over the last year; the velocity of diligence is increasing exponentially across almost every industry… which is a tremendous thing for everybody.”
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